Ventured into California this past weekend to race for the
first time in my cycling career; I made it a good one.
It was a six hour drive from our condo in Mesa to the small
“resort” in Boulevard, CA. It wasn’t a resort at all..in fact it was the worst
night of sleep I have ever had before a race to date. Note to all; never assume
that the hotel will have extra blankets. Willy and I slept on the air mattress
and endured one of the coldest nights ever. After getting a womping couple
hours of sleep we woke up at 6 in the morning and made some oatmeal, which has
quickly become a staple in my teams diet. Cheap, quick, and good for you…just
wish I liked it more..big bowl of snot. Anyways, after breakfast we realized
that we didn’t race till 12:40, we still had 6 hours.
I would say there are two things that really kill me before
a race.
First, warming up. Its one thing to be getting a good warm
up in before a time trail, it’s a whole different thing to be spinning
aimlessly around a parking lot or side road before a crit, or better yet a 90+
mile road race just asking to get a flat.
Second, waiting for a race. Pro1 races are most often
started late in the day and even sometimes as late as 10pm; this kills me! You
basically spend the entire day waiting for this one moment, its all you think
about, all you prep for, your entire day now. Think kitting up early will help?
Umm no. just means you spend more time in your spandex. Think taking your time
peeing will help? No. you will still need to pee right before the start.
Nothing worse then already being kitted up 2 hours before a race; this is
exactly what Team Gateway did ha.
Boulevard has gained popularity within the SoCal region and
attracted a good amount of talent this year, including 16 of the U23 National
team fresh from team camp. The course is rolling with a solid down hill section
and an up hill section as well. For the first few laps many groups attempted to
break free of the field; this also included several splits that were scarily close
to breaking off. Going into the beginning of the 3rd lap one man had
gotten off from the field, Michael Olheiser had put a few min on a field that
had decided that one man was no threat.
Being on the front I found that the field was letting me
roll off, I went into tempo mode and put some time on the climb. Not much later
a US National team and Livestrong Rider, Lawson Craddock bridged to me and we
formed a two man break to get to the lone rider ahead. After a solid lap of
burying ourselves, rotating at an all out pace we made it to the feed zone and
thus the final lap of the race.
Not having gotten a successful feed to that point I new that
I needed two bottles. Grabbed one.
Alright one to go.
I motioned that I needed another bottle to our second feeder.
This mistake that happened next I will take most of the credit for, I rushed a
feeder who had little experience in the feed zone. As I grabbed the bottle he
did the one thing that you can never do as a feeder, hold on to the bottle. I
was pulled right, I then overcorrected left and went down. By this point I had
been off the front of the race for over 20 miles going all out and had just
gone down, I wasn’t really hurt, but ether way lets just say it took everything
I had not to be disrespectful or yell out in frustration. I tried calmly to
collect myself and bridge back up to Lawson, this took a little effort on my
part and can only regret that I wasted a little energy there, but once I
rejoined my breakaway partner we once again started rotating to find the man
who had just been given a little break by my misfortune.
A few miles later we did catch Mike and then started to
rotate the three of us. After a while and getting splits from the moto it was
clear that we were all gased and new that the chase would soon catch us, so we
sat up a little and waited. When the chase group did catch us, it was like a
gunshot went off and attacks flew and all I could do was hold on to what I
could after such a long time working in the break. I found myself in the back
group of the chase consisting of three riders, Ty Magner, Kenneth Hanson, and a
Hispanic rider that I did not recognize. We had 3 k to go and were on the final
climb, I knew I had nothing left for the sprint and was so ready for the race
to be done that I wasn’t about to play end of the race games, so I tempo’d the
remaining bits of the climb and waved the boys behind me around with 300 meters
to go. I rolled through the finish, very much dehydrated, utterly and totally
exhausted, but happy. Its moments and races like these were you know you are
doing what you love, pushing your body beyond where it naturally can go, I love
it, and I will continue to do push my body to that point till I cant anymore.
A few final notes. During the break we had two things yelled
at us that struck me.
The first was while rotating with Lawson we had a man yell
at him saying “you are doping!” What? You felt the need to say this because he
is on a team that was associated with a man who recently came out as a doper?
You are a fool. This is disrespectful to a racer that has worked hard in the
sport just like the rest of us. Doping happens in our sport and hopefully someday
that will change, but making accusations about something you know nothing about
wont help this change. Bike racing should be a sport that people feel safe
within, and you screaming at us while we are pouring our heart and soul into a
race doesn’t help. The chance of that man reading this is very unlikely, but
who knows.
The second thing that happened was a man on the course from
the masters field asking us if we were pros. While at the time it seemed like a
very silly thing of him to ask, now looking back on it, it makes me proud to be
racing against such a high level of athlete and to have the opportunity to do so.
Thank you for all of those who do this sport an amazing favor and support those
they can. Thank you.
